Haruhi Fujioka
Aya Hisakawa (early drama CDs) English: Caitlin Glass |portrayed by = Haruna Kawaguchi | relatives = Ranka Fujioka (father) Kotoko Fujioka (mother) | nationality = Japanese | gender = Female }} is a fictional character and the main protagonist from the manga series Ouran High School Host Club, which was created by Bisco Hatori. In the manga and its adaptations, Haruhi takes on the role of male host with a comical tsukkomi-archetype, despite being of female sex; keeping her sex secret from the host club's female clients. Haruhi's character was positively received, both because of her fluid gender and her down-to-earth personality. Character was sixteen years old when she portrayed Haruhi in her first feature-length film. ]] , who voices the character in English, referred to her work in Ouran as a passion project.]] At the start of the Ouran High School Host Club manga and anime, Haruhi enters the prestigious Ouran Academy on a scholarship. Looking for a quiet place to study, she stumbles upon the school's male-only host club, where she was initially mistaken for a boy due to her short hair and gender-neutral clothing. After knocking over a highly expensive vase, the club forces her to work away her debt. Having a "low perception of gender", Haruhi joins the club as a host, keeping her sex secret from the club's clientele. At the beginning of the story, Haruhi dislikes being forced to work for the host club. However, as the plot advances, Haruhi slowly grows less introverted and starts to realize that the boys of the host club have become her best friends who are helping her learn and grow to be a better person. The chapters consist of comedic explorations of shoujo clichés and gender performance. Unlike other shoujo heroines that Ouran High School Host Club parodies, Haruhi is an independent, hard-working asocial tsukkomi-type character who embraces a genderqueer or "gender-ambivalent" identity. Development Caitlin Glass, the English voice actress of Haruhi, has noted that the character is both among her most challenging and her favorite roles. In an interview with ''Swerve'', she described how difficult it was to "believably be a boy while still appealing even to a male audience." Taking the dual role of director and lead character, Glass said she felt like she had "something to prove" and, initially, she was under great pressure. Reception Afro Samurai of IGN listed Haruhi among his 25 "greatest anime characters". Stating that while the reverse harem genre of anime had been "done to death" by the time the Ouran High School Host Club anime was released, Haruhi's character went against the established tropes of the genre. Described as "super tomboyish, demure, and not at all moe," Haruhi is considered a good contrast to the eccentric cast of rich boys. In an anime review, IGN s D.F. Smith praised both Caitlin Glass and Maaya Sakamoto for their performance as Haruhi in their respective languages, reporting that it is a "tricky role". Sakamoto was nominated for a Seiyu Award in 2007 for her portrayal of Haruhi. Rose Bridges of Anime News Network lauded Haruhi as one of the "freshest elements" of the anime. Comparing Haruhi to Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket and Tsukushi Makino from Boys Over Flowers because of her strong sense of empathy and her "take-no-crap" attitude respectively, Bridges praised the character for her intelligence, ability to speak her mind and her "blasé approach to gender roles." Writing for The Mary Sue, Alenka Figa listed Haruhi at the top of her top five queer characters in anime. Noting that plots based on gender confusion are common in anime, Figa states that the trope was subverted quickly when Haruhi admits to her gender-blindness in the first episode. Aja Romano of The Daily Dot pointed Haruhi out as one of the "rare cases" where a character in an anime embraces a genderqueer or "gender-ambivalent" identity, refusing to return to what she described as "safely heteronormative territory." References External links *[https://web.archive.org/web/20121116092621/http://www.hakusensha.co.jp/host_anime/index.html Official Ouran High School Host Club manga website] *[http://www.ntv.co.jp/host/index.html Official NTV Ouran High School Host Club anime website] *[http://funimation.com/ouran/ Official Funimation Ouran website] Category:Ouran High School Host Club characters Category:Female anime and manga characters Category:LGBT characters in anime and manga Category:Child characters in anime and manga Category:Child characters in television Category:Fictional androgynes Category:Fictional non-binary people Category:Fictional cross-dressers Category:Fictional Japanese people Category:Fictional characters introduced in 2002